Eating egg yolks almost as harmful as smoking, says Canadian study

If you like your eggs sunny side up, Canadian researchers want you to listen up.

Researchers at Western University in Ontario say excessive consumption of egg yolks – especially in people with cardiovascular disease – can be almost as bad for your arteries as smoking, leading to atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis develops when your arteries harden due to the accumulation of fat, cholesterol and other substances, making it difficult for blood to flow through. This forms plaque, which can eventually form blockages inside the arteries, triggering other complications, such as a stroke or heart attack.

Artery hardening and plaque development are common with aging, but the National Center for Biotechnology Information says the condition is accelerated in younger people with high cholesterol levels.

The study followed more than 1,200 men and women, with a mean age of 61.5, and discovered the effect from eating three or more egg yolks a week was about two-thirds as harmful as smoking.

Study author Dr. David Spence tells Global News, “When you get older, you’re going to have a higher and higher risk of heart attacks. So why would you want to make your arteries get worse faster by piling cholesterol on you?”

And then there are the scrambled messages about eating eggs. “The mantra ‘Eggs can be part of a healthy diet for healthy people’ has confused the issue. It has been known for a long time that a high cholesterol intake increases the risk of cardiovascular events, and egg yolks have a very high cholesterol content,” Spence says in a news release.

“In diabetics, an egg a day increases coronary risk by two to five-fold.”

Canadians who turn to egg omelettes for breakfast or prepare egg salad sandwiches for a nutritious lunch may have been alarmed at the university’s findings.

Canada’s food guide recommends two eggs as an alternative serving to meat.

The Egg Farmers of Canada rejected the report’s findings, dismissing the comparison between smoking and eating eggs.

“It goes without saying that smoking is considered one of the most harmful activities when it comes to your personal health and wellness,” Karen Harvey, the farming organization’s nutrition officer and registered dietitian told reporters on Monday.

Desiree Nielsen, a Vancouver-based registered dietitian, says that healthy Canadians who eat well and exercise daily shouldn’t shy away from eggs as a healthy choice.

“We always have to take care in demonizing any one food, especially when it is a natural and unprocessed food,” she said.

She warned that eggs can easily turn into a delicious, nutritious meal or into a bad choice.

“Eggs scrambled with plenty of vegetables and served with a single piece of sprouted grain toast is a dramatically different meal than greasy fried eggs served with giant slices of ham, hash browns and white toast. One meal has plenty of nutrition; the other is fibre-poor, drowning in salt and fat,” she said.

She cautioned to readers that smoking and eating eggs is a strange comparison.

“While statistically, the risk of eating eggs might have been similar to the risk of smoking in this particular study – in reality, you absolutely cannot compare the two,” she said, noting that cigarette smoke can be addictive, is recognized as a toxin to the body and is a leading cause of cancer and other diseases.

“You simply cannot compare it to a couple of eggs, which is simply food.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, if you are healthy, you shouldn’t consume more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day. If you have diabetes, heart disease, or high levels of LDL (low-density lipoprotein or “bad”) cholesterol in your blood, you should try to have no more than 200 milligrams per day.

“In the long haul, egg yolks are not OK for most Canadians,” Spence says, stressing people at risk of cardiovascular disease should avoid consuming egg yolks regularly.

One large egg contains about 186 milligrams of cholesterol, which is all contained in the yolk. Egg whites don’t contain cholesterol. Meat, seafood and some dairy products also contain cholesterol.

An ultrasound was used to measure the plaque levels in the study subjects, who also filled out questionnaires regarding their egg yolk consumption and smoking habits. Spence admits more research needs to be performed to look at the fitness levels and waistlines of those involved in the research.

The study was published in this week’s edition of the journal Atherosclerosis.